The Kindly Ones полностью

My first night in Stalingrad, I still remember, I had another metro dream. It was a station with many levels, but they communicated with each other, a huge labyrinth of steel beams, footbridges, steep metal ladders, spiral staircases. The trains arrived at the platforms and left them in a deafening racket. I didn’t have a ticket and I was terrified of being checked by the station police. I went down a few levels and slipped into a train that was leaving the station and then dive-bombed almost vertically on its tracks; below, it slowed down, reversed its direction and, passing by the platform again without stopping, plunged in the other direction, into a vast abyss of light and harsh noise. When I awoke, I felt drained; I had to make an immense effort to wash my face and shave. My skin itched; I hoped I wasn’t catching lice. I spent a few hours studying a map of the city and some files; Thomas helped me orient myself: “The Russians are still holding a thin strip along the river. They were surrounded, especially when the river was carrying ice floes and wasn’t completely frozen; now it doesn’t matter if they have their backs to the river; they’re the ones surrounding us. Here, above, is Red Square; last month, we finally managed, a little farther down, there, to cut their front in half, and so we have a foot on the Volga, here at the level of their old landing area. If we had ammunition we could almost prevent them from getting supplies, but we can really only shoot in case of attack, and they come and go as they please, even in daytime, on ice roads. All their logistics, their hospitals, their artillery, is on the other bank. From time to time we send them a few Stukas, but that’s just to tease them. Near here, they’ve hung on to a few blocks along the river, then they hold the whole big refinery, up to the foot of Hill 102, which is an old Tatar kurgan we’ve taken and lost dozens of times. The One Hundredth Jägerdivision holds this sector—Austrians, with a Croat regiment. Behind the refinery, there are some cliffs that lead to the river, and the Russians have a whole underground network inside them, untouchable since our shells pass right over them. We tried to liquidate it by blowing up the oil tanks, but they rebuilt everything as soon as the fires went out. Farther on, they also hold a large section of the Lazur chemical factory, with the whole zone we call the “Tennis Racket,” because of the shape of the tracks. Farther north, most of the factories are ours, except a sector of the Red October foundry. From there on we’re on the river, up to Spartakovka, the northern limit of the Kessel. The city itself is held by General Seydlitz’s LIST Corps; but the factories sector belongs to the Eleventh Corps. To the south, it’s the same thing: the Reds hold just a strip, about a hundred meters wide. It’s those hundred meters we never managed to reduce. The city is more or less cut in half by the Tsaritsa ravine; we’ve inherited a fine underground complex dug into the cliffs, and that has become our main hospital. Behind the train station, there’s a Stalag, administered by the Wehrmacht; we have a little KL in the Vertyashyi kolkhoz, for the civilians we arrest and don’t execute right away. What else? There are brothels in the basements, but you’ll find those on your own, if you’re interested. Ivan knows them well. That said, the girls are mostly covered in lice.”—“Speaking of lice…”—“Oh, you’ll have to get used to them. Look.” He unfastened his tunic, slipped his hand inside, searched, and pulled it out: it was full of little gray creatures, which he threw on the stove where they began to crackle. Thomas continued calmly: “We have huge fuel problems. Schmidt, the Chief of Staff—the one who replaced Heim, you remember?—Schmidt controls all the reserves, even our own, and he dispenses it in dribs and drabs. Anyway, you’ll see: Schmidt controls everything here. Paulus is just a marionette. The result is that moving around by car is forbidden. Between Hill 102 and the south station, we do everything on foot; to go farther, you have to hitch a ride with the Wehrmacht. They have pretty regular liaisons between the sectors.” There was still a lot to absorb, but Thomas was patient. Midmorning, we learned that Tatsinskaya had fallen at dawn; the Luftwaffe had waited till the Russian tanks were at the edge of the runway to evacuate, and had lost 72 aircraft, almost 10 percent of their transport fleet. Thomas had shown me the supply figures: they were catastrophic. The previous Saturday, December 19, 154 planes had been able to land with 289 tons; but there were also days with only 15 or 20 tons; AOK 6, at the beginning, had demanded 700 tons per day, at a minimum, and Göring had promised 500. “As for that one,” Möritz commented dryly during the meeting when he announced to his officers the news of the loss of Tatsinskaya, “a few weeks’ diet in the Kessel would do him good.” The Luftwaffe planned to move to Salsk, 300 kilometers away from the Kessel, the maximum range of the Ju-52s. That promised a merry Christmas.